§5 A Quickening Within the Dark's Ancient Capitol
Jan Rozencrantz. A former Riskbreaker, yet a man still true to himself and his pragmatic machiavellianism. Human to the core, he used everyone and trusted no one in the pursuit of his desires. Of all the people wandering around Lea Monde, groping after the Dark's promise of power, Rozencrantz's motivation for wanting it was perhaps the purest of them all; simple greed.
So Ashley mused muzzily as he watched the other Riskbreaker's chest part company with his waist, the two chunks flowering into a black ash that invisible winds scattered throughout the Chamber of Reason.
But even Rozencrantz, fox-clever and grounded in practicality as he was, believed -- impractically, foolishly-- that the Dark couldn't touch him at all. It was a Dark-enchanted stone blade brought an end to that empty fantasy, ushering Rozencrantz's Dark-stained soul down the path to incomplete death, but it was that convenient, believable lie that first doomed him.
So, given that, could it really be ruled out that Rozencrantz was a brain-washed tool of the VKP?
Rozencrantz was a former Riskbreaker. Considering all the top secret and highly sensitive information one needed to know for missions, would the VKP really let him simply retire? Even the idea that he got kicked out and was then left to roam loose was hard to swallow. It was very, very likely that Rozencrantz had been brainwashed; twisted so that every idea and action he thought to be purely his own was instead precisely what the VKP wanted him to do. A sacrificial pawn sent into the fray to catalyze certain events to the Parliament's benefit, if you will.
Ashley's train of thought stuttered to a halt, then backtracked. Wait, perhaps he was only wishing that's what happened-- a convenient, believable lie that would bolster other thoughts that might just be more convenient, believable lies…
Making conscious effort, Ashley gathered wits scattered by Rozencrantz's nasty blow to the back of his head and tried to stand. At the far end of his still-fuzzing vision he could make out Sydney, near the doors leading out of Kiltia's Temple, and off to the side tottered the newly awakened stone goddess.
"I give you the City, Riskbreaker!" Sydney intoned, aiming one slender hagane claw of one empty, eldritch metal hand right at Ashley, "All it's power-- all to you! Make haste! Join me! Already your powers are close to readiness! Come!"
"Keep your cursed city!" Ashley shouted right back, pent up anger and frustration suddenly welling up and spilling out.
Come to think of it, Ashley hadn't so much chased Sydney to Lea Monde as Sydney had lured Ashley there, but for what reason the Riskbreaker had no idea. The blonde prophet left behind a mile wide trail, and he never ventured too far ahead of his supposed pursuer. At one point Ashley even overtook Sydney-- only to be shunted off into the role of Sydney's protector against the Dark Crusader. Sydney had summoned a long parade of monsters to bar Ashley's way, and each was undoubtedly formidable. But not a single one was so overly terrible that Ashley couldn't defeat it with a bit of work. It was almost as if Sydney could guess how good Ashley would be at which place, and then summon a beast that would push that level ever so slightly.
Unfathomable behavior on the part of a quarry Ashley in no way understood, until Rosencrantz blurted out the whole thing. Perhaps thinking Ashley too muddled or unconscious, he laid the whole plot in the open during his verbal sparring match with Sydney.
So Sydney never had any plans to kill him. No. Maybe it is better said that Sydney was testing Ashley, tossing him into Lea Monde's monster-infested mazes and watching to see if the Riskbreaker made it out alive or not. Dying, of course, meant that he wasn't up to Sydney's requirements. However, survival meant power. With each beast he killed his weapons mastery grew and the Dark's roots sunk deeper into his soul. Theoretically, once he reached the center of the maze, he would have become Sydney's ideal… whatever. Put simply, Sydney was training him, using repeated limit-pushing battles to force Ashley's potential into a continuous, sharp growth. That was the immortal's reasoning, his purpose behind the otherwise odd actions he took.
And Sydney's ultimate motive: an Heir to the Dark. He needed a successor to the Wellspring, and Ashley was it. The Dark was the last thing Ashley ever wanted, and he was sparing in the use of what he did have. Reason enough, according to Sydney, to give the Riskbreaker power equal to that of a god. Consequently, Ashley-- long since stained black with the Dark's touch-- would receive the only escape allowed from a gruesome incomplete death. As Sydney's successor, he would inherit Complete Immortality.
Everything Rozencrantz, Guildenstern, the Cardinal and the VKP were searching so desperately for, and Sydney was handing it all to him on a silver platter.
Ashley didn't want it. Any of it. Was it really possible for a born human to live and function in a human world once he'd become something entirely different? Ashley thought not.
When he'd lost the only things that let him enjoy a happy life as nothing more than a man, he'd fallen into a hell of desire for that which he could never again have, and there was no way out. The Dark was no miracle. It couldn't sate that desire by bringing back his family or the simple, quiet happiness he'd known. It couldn't even tell him if he'd ever really had a family and a happy life in the first place. It certainly couldn't change his past as a licensed murderer in the VKP. No, the Dark was a saltwater drought that would parch a throat further for every sip taken.
"Where's Merlose?!"
At least Merlose, he thought. If he could do nothing else, he wanted to bring Callo Merlose safely out of this fairy tale turned waking nightmare. He'd failed once before to protect his family, and even if that memory was no more than a warped lie it did nothing to change the guilt ridden self-loathing that ate at his heart. This time he would not fail.
Almost as if he'd heard the whole of that inner monologue, Sydney smiled a mysterious little smile and turned his back on the other man. Striding out of the Chamber, he casually threw over his shoulder;
"You may be able to save them-- your wife and child. Should you meet them, repent Ashley, repent!"
A multi-pronged barb driven straight into his deepest pain, all the blood drained from Ashley's face in a rush. A second later, his tired brain finally processed the meaning of what Sydney had said.
-----he could save Tia and Marco?
He had to know what Sydney really meant by those words. Shoving himself all the way to his feet, Ashley started after the blonde's retreating figure. He'd gone no more than three steps when something interposed itself between him and his quarry.
Kali. The living statue. Carved into the likeness of an ancient, foreign goddess of war, it had been in a convenient place at a convenient time for Sydney. Using a small bit of the power coveted by everyone excepting himself and Ashley, he'd brought the stone demoness to life.
She'd been waiting patiently for the chance to strike, body torquing in a strangely snakelike, hypnotic fashion. Three beautiful faces looked out from atop two sets of shoulders, the entirety of the Chamber of Reason well within her field of vision. Four slim arms belied their weak appearance, each holding aloft a huge, wickedly sharp weapon. One arm swung in wide arcs the great sword that had cut Rozencrantz in two. Another held a gargantuan, forklike sasumata ready to rend. A mace so big that one blow would likely smash every bone in his body, and an axe that could probably slice his shield and his self in half in a single swipe hung poised in the other two arms, ready to strike the second an opportunity presented itself. Magic wound through her twisting, dance-like step, drawing the eye and sapping strength.
For all that she was just a stone likeness of the old goddess, the power of one deified by present day believers had been poured into her. She would not be easy to destroy. Not easy, but not impossible either. Sydney would not have given her life if he did not think Ashley capable of taking it from her. His strength had grown to the point where he could go toe to toe with a god and win--- just as Sydney knew it would.
In pursuit of the immortal bearing the mark of the apostate, the Riskbreaker clashed with the Goddess of Slaughter. Dark slammed against Dark and the air itself trembled, a shockwave rippling through the whole of the Wellspring like the first contraction of labor, foretelling the birth of a new Ashley Riot---------.